"IS ANYBODY PAYING ATTENTION?" The mindful view of an educated Buddhist blogger who uses critical thinking, evidence, facts, and investigation to come up with his opinions instead of fear based ideologies.

Thursday, September 20, 2012

This morning, some MORON on Google Plus posted this graphic, asking people to click on +1 if they agreed. I find it disgusting since I know better and this is the actual numbers having to do with "Obama's Plan". This is reprinted from Jeff Spross of Think Progress Now .org. "...New numbers released July 6, 2012 by the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that the economy added a mere 80,000 jobs in June. That’s down from an average of 150,000 jobs a month for the first part of the year, and far too little to keep up with population growth.Republican intransigence on economic policy has been a key contributor to the sluggish recovery. As early as 2009, Republican fear-mongering over spending and their readiness to filibuster in the Senate helped convince the White House economic team that an $800 billion stimulus was the most they could hope to get through Congress. Reporting has since revealed that the team thought the country actually needed a stimulus on the order of $1.2 to $1.8 trillion. The economy’s path over the next three years proved them right. Here are the top five ways the Republicans have sabotaged the economic recovery since:
1. Filibustering the American Jobs Act. Last October, Senate Republicans killed a jobs bill proposed by President Obama that would have pumped $447 billion into the economy. Multiple economic analysts predicted the bill would add around two million jobs and hailed it as defense against a double-dip recession. The Congressional Budget Office also scored it as a net deficit reducer over ten years, and the American public supported the bill.
2. Stonewalling monetary stimulus. The Federal Reserve can do enormous good for a depressed economy through more aggressive monetary stimulus, and by tolerating a temporarily higher level of inflation. But with everything from Ron Paul’s anti-inflationary crusade to Rick Perry threatening to lynch Chairman Ben Bernanke, Republicans have browbeaten the Fed into not going down this path. Most damagingly, the GOP repeatedly held up President Obama’s nominations to the Federal Reserve Board during the critical months of the recession, leaving the board without the institutional clout it needed to help the economy.
3. Threatening a debt default. Even though the country didn’t actually hit its debt ceiling last summer, the Republican threat to default on the United States’ outstanding obligations was sufficient to spook financial markets and do real damage to the economy.
4. Cutting discretionary spending in the debt ceiling deal. The deal the GOP extracted as the price for avoiding default imposed around $900 billion in cuts over ten years. It included $30.5 billion in discretionary cuts in 2012 alone, costing the country 0.3 percent in economic growth and 323,000 jobs, according to estimates from the Economic Policy Institute. Starting in 2013, the deal will trigger another $1.2 trillion in cuts over ten years.
5. Cutting discretionary spending in the budget deal. While not as cataclysmic as the debt ceiling brinksmanship, Republicans also threatened a shutdown of the government in early 2011 if cuts were not made to that year’s budget. The deal they struck with the White House cut $38 billion from food stamps, health, education, law enforcement, and low-income programs among others, while sparing defense almost entirely.
There have also been a few near-misses, in which the GOP almost prevented help from coming to the economy. The Republicans in the House delayed a transportation bill that saved as many as 1.9 million jobs. House Committees run by the GOP have passed proposals aimed at cutting billions from food stamps, and the party has repeatedly threatened to kill extensions of unemployment insurance and cuts to the payroll tax.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, those policies — the payroll tax cut, food stamps, unemployment insurance, and discretionary spending for low-income Americans — have the highest multipliers, meaning more job boosting potential per dollar."

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

This may be the shortest post I write. Most of it is a quote, showing the common place Christian Arrogance that is so rampant in our society;

"Nobody has the right to worship on this planet any other God than Jehovah. And therefore the state does not have the responsibility to defend anybody's psuedo-right to worship an idol."
"If America is to be saved now, homosexuals and humanists must be either converted or destroyed by the hand of Almighty God, ...if the homosexuals are not burned out of America. if the humanist aren't burned out of Ameria, there is no hope."
Reverend Joseph Morecraft (Chalcedon Presbyterian Church)

Monday, September 17, 2012

Governor Romney,
I am submitting this with as much respect as I think you deserve. You might be misinformed and NOT a liar, I don't know. I will give you the benefit of the doubt on this, but you will have to ask someone whom you consider to be dependent on government, not another rich person like you and Paul Ryan. I live in the state of Arizona and used to work as a Union Carpenter's apprentice, a carpenter, and I actually do have a degree in web design, which won't get me a job. I have traded occupations and retrained to suit the economy at least ten times. Each time there is a new economic downturn (which is a nice way of saying someone screwed us but they are being allowed to do it by other greedy people in government) and all the jobs went away, most of us working class people whom you consider poor were struggling to start over.
I have had to start over during 4 economic downturns that destroyed the printing business, the construction business 4 times, the real estate business, architectural hand drafting and hand drafting altogether, and the mortgage business, each one being something I was at least loosely connected with. Whole industries were mechanized (machines took over) because people who made the corporations rich through their hard work were discarded like trash because efficiency experts who are out for profit instead of employment of the people who work for them, don't care about anything but a profit. That is why corporations are NOT PEOPLE, friend.
You hid your money in the Cayman Islands and Switzerland instead of paying your share of income taxes or creating new employment possibilities for Americans, which is the American way. YOU are the one who hates America, it's taxes, it's masses of people who make under 100,000 dollars a year. Why should 98 percent of us even consider voting for a person like you when you don't care about anyone but yourself. You want the job of president - NOT because you have a vision for America, but merely because it is just another way for to become richer and retire early. You don't seem to understand two things. Mathematics and science are real - and people know who you are.
Your dad was an illegal alien. You could have been the son of a farm laborer, instead it was a Mormon who had connections and became wealthy by redistributing wealth through employment, which made him richer. He invested in the American people. You can own everything you want, but if no one shows up to
work for you, you will lose your business and property that you invested in. Unfortunately, your dad didn't seem to teach you about something important. It is called LOYALTY to the employees/laborers who created the products you sell. Your dad understood that. You don't. If you want to treat people like they are slaves and then take away their jobs, while you become rich off of it, that is legal in the United States, even though some of us would like to see legislation to prevent that. This is the reason why people like you have a problem with regulations. There is a word that stands for a certain kind of principles which will remain timeless and about things like what our constitution demands, that we don't try to harm (even through deceit and manipulation) another person. This is a principle that my father taught me. It is called "ETHICS". With all your supposed Mormon upbringing, you don't seem to have any of those.
Unlike your father, your wealth came to you with no struggle on your own part, so
you don't understand about what your father knew, that you and your employees struggled together to reach his goals and that he owed them for helping make his visions real for his family. Those who would prevent collective bargaining by labor or outsourcing of American jobs are what is the main things wrong for our struggling working class in America, but also apathy and having misguided loyalties & a backwards sense of priorities is part of the whole thing. As you recently stated, 47 percent of the people in this economy are dependent on government because they are disabled or have had their life become one struggle after another, created by people like you until their spirit was crushed.
You don't deserve our sympathy for being an out of touch greedy person who wants the brass ring while never wanting to give back and you definitely don't deserve our vote. I know you are probably, like most of the Republicans who shared the G.O.P. circus with you on the road and at the debates this year, just running for soft money contributions that your base, the corporations you favor over real people, give to you without you having to give the money back if it isn't spent during the campaign. I don't really care, I think you deserve to know the truth about some people whom you casually slander.
Single Disabled people in Arizona make less that 12 thousand dollars a year, altogether, including food stamps and you think people who make $100,000 to $250,000 a year are middle class. Most Americans don't make $100,000 in less than 1 1/2 to 5 years. This is just one more reason that we know that you don't understand, much less care about real Americans.
I will end this appropriately and instead of "Goodbye" I have some other salutation. When the election is over, my only thought to anyone like you is, "Good riddance."

About Me

I am an Arizona native, born and raised in Phoenix, although I have lived for brief times in other places. I am what one would call a Centrist. I don't believe in radical left or right stances and refuse to let the low information, regressive, right wing people call me "liberal" since that would be left of reality based on opinion, and I believe in facts and research of evidence.